


Better Off

by HarlotsHouse



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alana and Jack finally get a break, Alana and Jack struggle post fall, Alana and Margot get the ending they deserve, Alana doesn’t take shit from men, Alana is a bad bitch, Alana recovers, Alana takes over Will’s job, Bodies in lake, Gen, The murder husbands should fuck off and leave everyone alone, flashfic #005, implied sexism at work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29311089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarlotsHouse/pseuds/HarlotsHouse
Summary: Alana Bloom is hired as the FBI’s new consultant post the Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham fiasco. She immediately knows who murdered the people in the lake, but decides some things are best left buried.Jack Crawford and Alana Bloom deserve a break.
Relationships: Alana Bloom/Margot Verger, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Kudos: 22
Collections: Hannibal Flashfic #005





	Better Off

**Author's Note:**

> Getting over things.

The marshy waters obscured the bodies for the most part; reeds intertwining with the naked flaking flesh, brown at their stem but a sickish green at their finish, pulled taught around the limbs, as if protecting them. The scene gave the illusion of water children obscured from the land walkers, the waters possessive and dark, and mottled safe for the parts where reaching hands interrupted the murky surface, one last call for help. Alana stood at the edge of the bank, and from the perspective of a bird sat on a tree on the other side of the body of water, she'd appear to be their God, smack in the middle and surrounded by them, all attracted to her like moths take to flames.

She half expected the rest of their bodies to follow along with them, rising from their liquid cage to finally touch her with their cool fingers. There's an irrefutable sensation that she'd been there before, gazing into the infinite abyss of the water full of rot. She'd once believed herself in a similar state of mind, blind and suffocated in her confusion, reaching for something to grasp through all the obscurity.

_"In your defense, I worked hard to keep you blind."_

Shaken, Alana warily glanced around, taking in the sight of police officers and forensics skirting around the green pasture for any sign of the dark all-seeing eyes that had once uttered those words. She could still hear his voice at times such as this, a ghost of the friend she'd thought she had.

The tragedy of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham haunted everyone who'd known them. For her everything that'd led to the catastrophe of their union had, after much self forgiving and forgiving all around of everyone involved, been predestined. Though Alana had never been the religious kind, or the type to take to the concept of fate and other such conventional explanations for the psychological and chemistry between two people, there was something undeniably appealing about the concept that there was such thing as looking into a void inside a person and have the void reflect back a mirage of yourself.

At first, post the Lecter and Graham fiasco, this line of thinking had often made Alana entertain herself with the knowledge that Hannibal must have inevitably driven himself mad, finding himself a monster in love with a human, or perhaps a devil in love with a god, or whatever other grandiosity the uptight man declared himself and Will Graham as.

Now, unfortunately, this same thought had drawn forth an empty feeling in Alana, taking in the sight of the bodies as they were slowly removed from their soggy graves. She felt bitter, having taken one glance and having known just which pair of freaks had caused the mess. They no doubt rejoiced in their taunting over the FBI, Alana, and Jack, fancying themselves artists with a medium that was unconventional and bizarre to everyone but themselves. This, however, for all the pestiferous and maddening emotions it incited in everyone in the area, did not reach the magnitude of colossal fear and trepidation Alana succumbed to at the realization that the bastards had not stayed dead as everyone had believed and hoped.

Shaking herself out of her reverie, she walked back through the pasture, her kitten heels flattening the reaching grass shards through her anger bidden path.

Jack was conversing with a balding lizardish man. He'd said his name often but Alana had worked hard to ignore it for the most part. Jack had hired him to be her partner of sorts, both deemed ideal for the consulting job. Alana gravely disagreed on the lizard man having any skills other than his tenacity to pompously talk about himself and dismiss Alana's observations so as to hold himself in a higher regard. Though in Jack's defense, he was a tired man, left in shambles and still grasping at murmurs of any sign of Will Graham, it made sense why in his desperation to reconstruct himself he might have hired the skeleton of a man currently talking his ear off.

"-and so this killer will likely continue this pattern and grab more affluent people to murder and dump in bodies of water." Alana frowned at this. Jack continued staring emptily into space. "I'd say he's in his mid 20's to early 30's, strong and with enough time to pull the bodies into the lake. He has a naïve sense of vigilante justice, perhaps poor and felt he should get rid of the higher class."

Alana couldn't help it. She laughed.

Jack owlishly blinked, as if finally waking at the sound of her laughter. "I appreciate your input agent Goodman," Jack said, though Alana knew he'd said so out of courtesy rather than any interest he might have had towards whatever Goodman had to say. Jack turned to Alana, regarding her with familiarity in his eyes. "Agent Bloom, glad you could make it. I assume you had a look?"

"I did." Alana nodded. She sighed, turning in the direction of the lake. "These _killers_ ," she allowed. "-have a refined taste, either one or both has money and these people had the misfortune of meeting them. They don't have any preconceived profile for who gets to die, or perhaps little requirements, but they do believe these people aren't of much value. They won't kill in this way again. If anything, placing them here was out of convenience, they are long gone. This is their farewell."

Goodman's face had twitched in annoyance and only turned darker with every word Alana had used to debunk his own theory. He opened his mouth, mid-retort before Jack gave Alana a look of appraisal. "Thank you, Dr. Bloom."

"My pleasure, Jack."

"Yes, well, I'll have to disagree with you Alana," Goodman begun. Alana's lips went flat. Where Goodman acknowledged every other agent with formality and respect she'd been rendered 'Alana', though not in the warm way Jack called her as such in their familiarity, but in the dismissive kind. The same tone of voice your highschool English teacher who held an ill-born grudge against you because you failed to turn in an assignment on time once, and thus been branded 'problem child', had when you said something of remarkable intellect, hating you for proving the profile they'd created of you wrong but still unwilling to admit defeat. And so, Goodman snobbishly continued, "I sincerely doubt that the killer wouldn't feel hatred towards the good people murdered here. He could very well be targeting more rich-"

"They are dead because they are killable, and deserving but not through hatred," Alana interrupted. "These killers rarely do actually fully hate anyone. It'd be a privilege to be deemed of enough importance to be hated by them. It's really a matter of who is-" she stopped herself short of uttering _rude_ , mindful of Jack whom she now has his full attention of. "-there in the right circumstance."

"Circumstantial?" Goodman guffawed, disbelieving. "Oh Alana, I'm aware of your doctorate but it's obvious how little time you've spent in the field in full action."

But it's too late, Jack had already caught the scent of what Alana was about to say. It was almost comical how he transitioned from a sad sagging mimic of the man he once was to a man then stood at his full height, eyes slitting and alert as if waiting for a lion to come pouncing out of the shadows.

"Is this _them_?" Jack said, a glance in the lake's direction.

Goodman prattled on, unbeknownst to the fact neither Jack or Alana were listening.

"They are in every killer we visit, Jack," Alana said solemnly. Jack seemed to deflate a bit. "Or, at least, I imagine signs of them in all of them."

"Sign of who?" Goodman cut in, realizing whatever point he'd been trying to prove was moot and now wanted to reclaim some dignity. Alana didn't know why he bothered.

"We keep a small lookout of the missing Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham," Jack said, taking pity.

"Oh," Goodman straightened himself, preparing for a speech.

Alana sent her eyes skyward, because what only she and Jack knew was that one of the few reasons Goodman had been hired at all was because he'd known of Will Graham and had overstated in his interview how much help he could be of with his 'insider knowledge' in having known him. Though perhaps known was a bit of a stretch seeing as clearly (as seen through recent events) no one had truly known Will Graham, except of course, Hannibal Lecter. No, moreso Goodman had been part of several of Will's classes in college and been his roommate one single semester before Will had probably seen what Alana saw in Goodman(which is an annoying fuck), and packed his bags and paid the extra amount for a single dormitory.

Goodman, by some miracle, became an agent and stumbled across the news of what had happened to his ex roommate/classmate and researched all things Will and all things Hannibal in what can only be classified as an obsession of the utmost annoyance. Any mention of either always sent Goodman into a tirade of how he and Will had been such good acquaintances -doubt- and how he of all people knew his thoughts and motivations exceptionally well -irrefutably false- but undeniably admirable in his dedication to a man long gone. Alana wouldn't be surprised if he held some sort of shrine in his closet full of pictures of Will, heart stickers and locks of hair and all. Should Hannibal Lecter by any chance find out about Goodman, he'd no doubt be reunited with Will again, though presented to him on a silver platter and garnished with mint and berries.

"-I think, they fled to New Orleans." Goodman finished after his little spiel. For all that he was stupid he was right in one thing. That the men were alive.

Alana blinked.

Goodman took this as sign to continue, "Will was a cop there, there was an incident where he couldn't shoot a man and resigned. Maybe he would want to revisit-"

"Been reading Will Graham's wikipedia lately?" Alana said, a single brow casually elevated.

"Well-" Goodman started, indignant. But Alana decided she'd had enough of it and stalked off towards her car, after a polite goodbye to Jack.

She mulled over whether not telling Jack was the right choice to make. Although in some past version of herself she might have felt inclined to tell Jack so as to provide at least the families of the victims some closure, Alana over time felt she and he were owed some peace of mind. No longer would she put everyone else before herself: it'd only lead to a fractured spine, several months in a wheel chair, and the horror that she'd fucked a cannibal, had once kissed said cannibal's homicidal boyfriend, and only heaven blessedly made it out alive with a cane in toe. Whereas Jack...Jack had lost everything. He'd been ground through hell and back, his reputation left in shambles, lost his wife, Beverly, Miriam, and the respect of his colleagues.

Neither Alana or Jack ever truly let it show how tired the other was. Tired of everything that had occurred, of the furtive glances sent their way, people toeing around them as if they might snap at a single mention of The Chesapeake Ripper or Will Graham...Though Google would now say the Chesapeake Ripper was two men.

Alana cursed into the steering wheel as she ran through a red light only to realize she'd gone in the wrong direction. She made a hasty -and not very legal- U-turn and high tailed it out of the street.

She was allowed this one thing too. Or so Alana reasoned to herself.

There was enough of Will and Hannibal's names circling around Alana in her life. Just like the hands that had reached for her, surrounding her from the depths of the waters. Alana had always been surrounded by criminal minds and mentally unstable people and she'd frankly had enough of it. Alana dreamed about a day where when people whispered and glanced at her in the halls it would be for her own accomplishments and not because of her involvement with any man.

She just wanted to be Alana Bloom, psychiatrist, FBI consultant and Profiler, wife of Margot Verger, and mother of one beautiful growing boy.

With this in mind, she strode up the front steps of her home, leaving behind people's assumptions and all talk of murder husbands and their like.

It'd took her a while to become accustomed to the Verger estate's vastness and detailed if not creepy paintings but after some remodeling -and removal of any sign of one nasty pig man- what was left was a proper home.

Her child's laughter arrived at the end of the hall and only boomed louder as he ran towards her. Alana spread her arms, awaiting for the inevitable, and gave a small huff as his weight knocked into her chest at full force.

"Honey, I'm home!" Alana called in what was an inside joke of hers and Margot's, her lips spread wide.

"Mr. Milkman, back so soon?" Margot jibed, humor creased at her eyes as she strode over.

As Margot's arms wrapped around her, Alana's mind left her, floating and arriving once more at the edge of the pond with its infinite murmurings of trouble whispered throughout the murk. The hands still wailed and surrounded Alana, reaching for her with cries for help, though thinly veiled with deceit all the same. One by one the faces of the people she'd thought she had known, and thought she could help appeared, screaming her name.

"Alana, why didn't you believe me?" Will cried. "I told you he was dangerous!"

Alana gasped, "I-I didn't know!"

"You knew, deep down, you just weren't willing to see," Will hissed.

"You're like catnip for serial killers." Abel Gideon's face rose up. He chuckled darkly. "You're such a sweet thing Alana Bloom, sorry I tried to kill you."

"My, my, my, if it isn't the bitch who stole everything from me," Mason Verger said. "Tell me, is my son well? Does he look like me?"

Alana pursed her lips. "He'll never even know your name."

Mason frowned before disappearing into the depths once more.

The next face the followed behind a reaching hand procured a stuttered breath from Alana, gluing her to her spot, where she noted she'd already subdued one foot into the water.

"Hello, Alana." his voice was still that same polite brusque timbre. "I hope you are well. Tell me, how does it feel now that I'm gone?"

"I feel...reborn." Alana muttered. She took in Hannibal's features, still the same planes and wrinkles, and came to a stark realization in that moment. "I'm not afraid of you anymore."

Hannibal nodded in approval.

Will's calculating eyes observed. "You're changing Alana," he said, voice suddenly soft. "I'm sorry things had to end that way."

The men disappeared. But another face rose up, arms thrashing and gasping, which spurred Alana to step fully into the pond, reaching as she yelled, "Abigail!"

Abigail struggled along the water, grasping at Alana and pulling her deeper. Suddenly the surface was high above them, and Alana was sinking with her. Abigail stopped moving, and smiled at Alana. Sadness lingered in her endlessly blue eyes. 'Goodbye' she mouthed as a pair of hands came reaching from above and pulled Alana to the surface, heaving out mouthfuls of water as they broke through. Margot's warm eyes of amber and green greeted hers, and sudden but sweetly, Margot kissed her.

At once, all her worries slipped away like birds fluttering their wings in search of higher ground. The pressure Alana had been holding on to finally released itself from her shoulders, unburdening her. She felt light weighted, and happy in Margot's arms.

"Is something wrong?" Margot said, voice lingering with worry.

Alana took in her surroundings and shook her head.

"Did something happen at work?"

She'd made the right decision, everything was finally over. "Talk of work, stays at work, Margot. Let's go somewhere."

Margot glanced at her curiously, though excitement lit up her eyes. "Go where?"

"We'll take Michael and go somewhere far. I don't care where..." Alana thought for a moment. "Though I'd prefer if it wasn't Italy."

"What's wrong with Italy?" Margot laughed as the pair walked into the dining room, where dinner was ready.

"I'm not a fan of pretentious wine bores." Alana smiled and Margot rolled her eyes, though there was fondness etched into every part of her face.

"Michael get over here!" Margot called.

Michael came running in, train truck in hand. As he and Margot argued over what was acceptable at the dinner table, Alana took her seat, elated and at ease.


End file.
